Tag: media

A failure to grasp price elasticity

To say nothing of the psychopathic nature of trolls. I cannot imagine this policy of charging for comments will work very well.

As a number of news sites eliminate their comments sections altogether, Tablet, a daily online magazine of Jewish news and culture, is introducing a new policy charging its readers to comment on articles.

As of today, a reader visiting the nonprofit site that is otherwise paywall-free will have to pay at least $2 to leave a comment at the foot of any story. The move is not part of a plan to generate any significant revenue, but rather to try and change the tone of its comments section.

Tablet has set up commenting charges of $2 a day, $18 a month and $180 a year, because “the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocal—and, often, anonymous—minorities to drag it down with invective (and worse),” editor in chief Alana Newhouse wrote in a post published today.

Charging for comments might work at a truly elite site like the New York Times. The level of exposure and the ability to associate one’s opinion right underneath a Paul Krugman column would be valuable to certain parties; I would have paid for such a comment-ad back when RGD came out myself.

But even at a site of modest popularity such as this one, the proposal would make no sense except as a roundabout way of banning comments without being seen to do so. This is one of the more prolifically commented sites in the blogosphere, but how many people here would pay $180 per year to comment here? I’d guess around ten or 20 people; Nate might pay that just to eliminate all the commenters from AG.

The problem is that the discourse would then be strictly limited to the same small group of people, it would become an insulated and repetitious conversation with an audience; it would become a form of conspicuous performance art. And does anyone doubt that trolls like Andrew Marston would even hesitate to cough up whatever it cost in order to buy a captive audience for his delusional meanderings?

As is the case with writers who calculate their lost sales by counting pirated copies, Tablet clearly fails to realize that someone who is willing to comment for free is not synonymous with someone who is willing to pay to comment. The latter tend to be a very small subset of the former.

The very special victim of #GamerGate

They have really dragged out this Sarkeesian thing considerably further than I ever would have imagined. It’s beyond parody at this point.

It’s a long-established tradition for TV shows to draw inspiration from real-life events. NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” is no different, and Wednesday, February 11, sees the crime drama series tackle Gamergate in an episode entitled “Intimidation Game.” The plot centers on the online harassment and kidnapping of a game developer, Raina Punjabi, modelled on controversial feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian.

NBC’s trailer opens with Punjabi discussing the threats she’s received with police. She is set to attend an important game launch but has become the victim of an online harassment campaign. Punjabi insists that she will attend the launch, however, because not only is it a massive international event but also she refuses to give in to online hordes of anonymous, misogynistic trolls. During the conversation, terms like “swatting,” “doxxing,” and “dark net” are referenced, with one detective pointing out that online threats are “not covered by free speech.” The dialogue is embarrassingly clumsy, written for an audience not familiar with Gamergate or the more complex workings of the internet.

This is so ludicrously absurd. What is next, NCIS featuring a three-part episode that involves the murder of a neurotic transvestite who calls himself Brianna Who? An epic fantasy HBO series entitled “The Saga of Yamanamama”?

Anyhow, I hope the bad guys are a team that involves a guy in a wheelchair, a television actor, and a handsome, athletic, forty-something game developer and novelist. That would be amusing.

Trust the news

Sure, Brian Williams may not have been shot at, or seen any dead bodies, but when he tells you that vaccines are perfectly safe, the economy is growing, and Vladimir Putin is about to invade France, you can have absolute confidence that what he is saying is true:

On Wednesday night, the world we live in became a confusing and unfamiliar place and most of us wandered the land not knowing what to believe when Brian Williams admitted that he was never in a chopper that was hit by RPG fire in Iraq in 2003. Brian was actually safely traveling in a different chopper. How can we believe anything now that Brian Williams has dribbled out lies to us? When Brian Williams says, “Good evening, I’m Brian Williams and this is the Nighty News,” do we know for sure it’s the evening and that it’s a good evening and that his name really is Brian Williams? Is that picture of Brian Williams’ supposed bulge a picture of his actual bulge or did he just stuff his khakis with the sack he keeps his lies in? Everything is squint-worthy now!!!

After getting called out on the lie he told, Brian said in Wednesday night’s broadcast of the NBC Nightly News that he “misremembered” the whole thing. Here’s Brian Williams’ apology in case you missed it:

Since Brian Williams admitted to “misremembering” the events of that day in Iraq, the media has been digging up and looking for other possible lies told by Brian Will-lie. The New Orleans Advocate says that while reporting in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, Brian claimed to have seen a dead body floating in the French Quarter. But apparently, the French Quarter did not flood during Hurricane Katrina and remained pretty dry. Brian also claimed he got sick with dysentery after accidentally drinking floodwater, but a local health expert doesn’t remember anyone coming down with that shit. Basically, everything is a lie. Was Brian Williams even in New Orleans and Iraq? He was probably just reporting in front of a green screen. Has he even been in a helicopter? Riding in a helicopter while playing Call of Duty doesn’t count. Is Brian Williams real? Are we sure he’s not just a hologram made by NBC?

An NBC News source tells Page Six that he’s not going to be suspended or punished in any way.

Williams can’t even tell the truth about things that he experienced directly. So why would you believe anything that he, or any other talking head, reads to you off a teleprompter?

The banning of an SJW

One of Wikipedia’s worst SJWs, the anti-GamerGate Ryulong, has been banned indefinitely for his all-too-typical thought-policing:

Ryulong banned

5.3) (Was 4.5) Ryulong (talk · contribs · logs · edit filter log · block log)
is indefinitely banned from the English Language Wikipedia. They may
request reconsideration of the ban twelve months after the enactment of
this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.
Support:

  1. (first choice) As always, banning someone is not something we should want
    to do, but sometimes it is the best thing for the project. Ryulong has
    acted very poorly in this topic area, and it is clear that previous
    sanctions and blocks have failed to have the desired effect of ending
    disruptive behavior. A revolving door of speedy topic bans, chasing the
    problem from area to another, is not the answer. This is. I sincerely
    hope that at some point in the future he will be able to return and be a
    productive member of this community again, but for now he needs to go. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
  2. Will prioritise later if need be,  Roger Davies talk 23:38, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
    Equal first choice,  Roger Davies talk 11:31, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  3. First choice. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs(talk) 23:56, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
  4. Last Choice I would love to not do this but I don’t think anything else has a snowball’s chance of passing —In actu (Guerillero) | My Talk 01:15, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  5. First choice. Salvio Let’s talk about it! 10:46, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
  6. Last choice of presented options (Right now). I think if we’re
    dealing with this on a purely pragmatic level this might be best for the
    project, but I do think that it would only be fair to attempt to apply
    some of the alternatives first, although I’m a bit concerned as to their
    potential efficacy, given the history. NativeForeigner Talk 07:26, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
    Nonetheless, support. NativeForeigner Talk 19:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
  7. T. Canens (talk) 17:12, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  8. If the 1RR does not pass, then first choice of what’s left. Still
    oppose if the 1RR somehow moves back to passing. The more I look at the
    history here, the more I am sure the problems are far wider than just
    this single topic, as I see it, Ryulong doesn’t seem able to “hold his
    fire”, and not get into edit wars. This also, per his block log, is
    independent of topic areas. Without very, very strong measures to stop
    them from continuing to edit war throughout the encyclopedia, I don’t
    think we have any other choice. Also, even to this morning, I still see
    evidence of ongoing battleground mentality. I really, really don’t like
    this, but I can’t support their staying on the project without a strict
    1RR and a topic ban at this point. And only one of those is going to
    pass. Courcelles 22:02, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose:

  1. My mind is open on the other proposed remedies, but I will certainly not be supporting this. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:41, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Neither will I. Need to contemplate the rest of it, but this is not the solution. Courcelles 03:48, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • Excessive in the circumstances. I’m open to some alternative. DGG ( talk ) 05:33, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
    • I would like to try something else. —Guerillero | My Talk 07:53, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
  2. I’ve decided to oppose this, albeit weakly. I’m hoping that the
    other remedies regarding Ryulong will end this situation, but I don’t
    quite think a siteban is the best course forward here. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:32, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  3. — Euryalus (talk) 05:13, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
  4. Given the circumstances here, I don’t think this is called for. For
    clarity’s sake, though, this is very likely the absolute last chance. Seraphimblade Talk to me 01:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
  5. LFaraone 18:45, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Abstain:

  1. I find my view on this changing from day to day, so it would be fairer if I abstained. DGG ( talk ) 20:47, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Comments:

Noting that I skipped this intentionally—still thinking on it and will come back soon. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:23, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

  • @NativeForeigner: I tried to fix the numbering, but clarification of your exact meaning would be useful here. Courcelles 20:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Of course, a perusal of the process tends to illustrate why Wikipedia is so hapless when it comes to policing outrageous behavior by its editors. Because it was started by an SJW-sympathetic individual and was rapidly taken over by SJWs of varying rabidity, the site remains hopelessly biased and largely worthless on anything of even moderate political contention.

 That being said, it is good to see that Wikipedia is trying to clean up its act, even if it is going about it in a manner that makes Sisyphus look productive. But they simply refuse to see that the way they cherry-pick which sources are deemed reliable and which are not is what produces the intrinsic left-wing bias. The SJW editor who sits on the Wikipedia page about me and tries to publicize as much negative information as possible while minimizing any positive information shows how he evades the point on the Talk page there:

Many of the recent additions to this article seem to be the direct result of Mr. Beale’s recent blog post
in which he commented that Wikipedia is unfairly and dishonestly
excluding material on his views: “Does [the ‘Views section in the
Wikipedia article] describe my views at all? Are the totality of my
views really limited to little more than a feud with John Scalzi and my
expulsion from SFWA? Do I have no opinions on economics, politics,
philosophy, literature, and religion despite having written books on the
former and the latter? It’s telling, too, to observe that if the
so-called feud and the expulsion are the only significant aspects of my
views, there is no mention of the connection between the former and the
latter.”

Mr. Beale then gave a brief description of his views on economics — he feels that the Austrian School
is currently the best explanation available, but is ultimately flawed
for various reasons — and stated that “(t)hose are my actual views on
the subject. That is the absolute truth. Post them on Wikipedia and
they’ll be suppressed within 24 hours.”

This, I believe, is indicative of a general misunderstanding. Of
course Mr. Beale has a great many more views than are provided in this
article; for instance, he has expressed an appreciation for the writing
of Frank Herbert and a dislike for that of Patrick Rothfuss.
I’m certain he also has food preferences, and opinions on the best way
to teach mathematics to children. He may even have discussed these views
in posts to his blog. But the mere fact that Mr. Beale has a view on a
subject does not indisputably lead to the conclusion that the view
should be included in Wikipedia’s biography of him, not even if he has
made a blog post in which he explicitly states that view. Rather, the
views which are (or should be) included are those which have drawn significant independent external attention. I hope that this explanation will satisfy the readers of Mr. Beale’s blog, and possibly even Mr. Beale himself. DS (talk) 14:42, 8 August 2014

This is the height of absurdity. I misunderstand nothing. Nor do you, my readers. There is FAR MORE significant independent external attention that has been paid to my views on economics, religion, and the history of war than have ever been paid to my views on immigration or race, much less my “Feud with John Scalzi”. I have NEVER done an interview about the latter; Scalzi himself did only one. I did over thirty interviews, some on national radio, about economics subsequent to the release of THE RETURN OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION and more than twenty related to THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST.

Transcripts and links to some of those interviews are available on my blog. My views are clearly expressed in them – again, on national radio shows, and even in one case, television – and yet every last trace of those views have been methodically scrubbed from Wikipedia by the likes of DragonFlySixtyseven.

Here is just one of many possible examples pulled from my email. There are over 75 similar emails from different media outlets ranging from Fox News to the Saturday Evening Post. But in the impartial eyes of the Wikipedia editors, the cumulative total of that independent external attention is less significant and notable than John Scalzi talking about himself on his blog that gets less than half the traffic of this one.

INTERVIEW CONFIRMATION
NAME:  Vox Day                     
TOPIC:  The Irrational Atheist
DATE:  Tuesday, October 21, 2008
INTERVIEW TIME:  11:15 – 11:55 am ET
LENGTH OF INTERVIEW:  40 minutes
MEDIA:  Christian Radio Network – over 200 stations in 34 states, 19 affiliates and in Canada

I can’t speak to the accuracy of the rest of Wikipedia, but my page is mostly nonsense from start to finish. I mean, it actually says that I was born in Minnesota.

Oh shut up, Damo

It’s often enjoyable to see how little heat SJWs are comfortable taking. They can’t stand much in the way of criticism and they seem to spend a considerable amount of time monitoring what others think and say about them in order to quickly jump in and try to steer the narrative away from anything they think looks bad.

This Twitter exchange was particularly funny, given that Damien Walter is always quick to heap obloquy on Larry Correia, me, and other writers whose politics he dislikes:

D Franklin @D_Libris
Why is it that almost every Damien Walter article can just be replied to, justifiably, with “Oh shut up, Damo”?

Damien Walter @damiengwalter
.@D_Libris Excuse me, I asked you to explain your claim that it was “justifiable” to tell me to “shut up Damo”. I’m going to keep asking.

Novel deVice ‏@noveldevice
@D_Libris you didn’t @ him so literally if he doesn’t want to see it he can just stop vanity searching. Boom.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
.@D_Libris If that’s your justification for your continued rude and aggressive behaviour, so be it. I’ve requested that you stop.

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris
.@damiengwalter saying that I’ve been rude and aggressive doesn’t make it so. Coming into my mentions and harassing me for a day, though…

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
@D_Libris I’ve asked you to explain why you consider it ‘justifiable” to tell me to “shut up Damo” you still have not done so.

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris
.@damiengwalter bcs you won’t. Bcs I don’t have authority to make you. Bcs it’s a common, unthreatening phrase.

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris
Added to which, because you wouldn’t have seen it if you hadn’t gone looking… Nor would you see people saying it

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
.@D_Libris Then I’m telling you it’s neither. Neither is your repeated rude and aggressive behaviour. I’m requesting, again, that you stop it.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
.@D_Libris I have a search open for articles I write for the Guardian, that’s standard practice so i can monitor the response.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
.@D_Libris If you search the URL, you’ll see yours stands out as personally abusive when no others are.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
.@D_Libris If you want to make criticisms, please do so constructively without personal insults.

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris Jan 20
@damiengwalter “shut up” is personally abusive? How about spending a day poking at someone, & trying to set your followers on them?

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter Jan 20
@D_Libris If you don’t believe it’s rude and aggressive, then I’m informing you it is and asking you not to repeat that behaviour.

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris
@damiengwalter I notice that Patrick Nielsen Hayden is not being called rude, & indeed you proudly retweeted his comment?

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris
@damiengwalter so it’s only people with platforms smaller than yours who you object to the perceived rudeness of?

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
@D_Libris I’m telling you that I find your repeated personal attacks rude and offensive. Will you respect my request to stop them?

D Franklin ‏@D_Libris
@damiengwalter I can’t stop what I’ve never done: I have never made repeated personal attacks on you, Damien

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
@D_Libris OK. I’ve made my request, your future actions are your own choice. I’m not continuing any further discussion with you now.

Joseph Tomaras @epateur
In solidarity with @D_Libris, I ask that everyone who’s ever found a @damiengwalter article moronic, please tell DGW to shut up.

The reason, of course, is that Damien Walter hasn’t mastered his subject, doesn’t do his homework, often doesn’t know what he’s talking about, regularly fails to distinguish between opinion and fact, and shows no ability to defend his rhetorical positions. That is why “oh shut up, Damo” is all that is required to effectively rebut him.

I don’t read his columns, there is no reason to do so. He’s boring even when he’s trying to be offensive. At least with the likes of McRapey there is usually an entertainingly manic edge to the nastiness.

It’s a start

Interesting to see the New York Times run an opinion piece written by the leader of France’s Front National, Marine LePen:

These mistakes must also be called by their names. I will mention only three, but they are of crucial importance.

First, the dogma of the free movement of peoples and goods is so firmly entrenched among the leaders of the European Union that the very idea of border checks is deemed to be heretical. And yet, every year tons of weapons from the Balkans enter French territory unhindered and hundreds of jihadists move freely around Europe. Small surprise then that Amedy Coulibaly’s machine gun came through Belgium, as the Walloon media have reported, or that his partner Hayat Boumeddiene fled to Syria under the nose of law enforcement.

Second, the massive waves of immigration, both legal and clandestine, our country has experienced for decades have prevented the implementation of a proper assimilation policy. As Hugues Lagrange, a sociologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S.), has argued, culture has a major influence on the way immigrants relate to French society and its values, on issues such as the status of women and the separation of state and religious authority.

Without a policy restricting immigration, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to fight against communalism and the rise of ways of life at odds with laïcité, France’s distinctive form of secularism, and other laws and values of the French Republic. An additional burden is mass unemployment, which is itself exacerbated by immigration.

Third, French foreign policy has wandered between Scylla and Charybdis in the last few years. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s intervention in Libya, President François Hollande’s support for some Syrian fundamentalists, alliances formed with rentier states that finance jihadist fighters, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia — all are mistakes that have plunged France into serious geopolitical incoherence from which it is struggling to extricate itself. Incidentally, Gerd Müller, Germany’s federal minister of economic cooperation and development, deserves praise for having the clear-sightedness, like the Front National, of accusing Qatar of supporting jihadists in Iraq.

It would appear that events in Paris have so frightened the editors of the New York Times that they’re actually willing to countenance the discussion of immigration and Islamization. What LePen is suggesting is far from sufficient, obviously, but it is a start.

However, the fact that both the French and German governments have banned anti-Mahometan marches this week tends to indicate that some sort of democratic upheaval will be required before any serious action is taken.

An apt metaphor

For the charade of globalist “leadership”:

Once again the mainstream media peddled the spoon-fed propaganda that world leaders “led the march” to honor the victims of the Paris shootings last week. Glorious photo-ops of Merkel, Hollande, Poroshenko, David Cameron (oh, and not Barack Obama) were smeared across front pages hailing the “unity in outrage.” However, as appears to be the case in so many ‘events’ in the new normal managed thinking in which we live, The Independent reports, French TV has exposed the reality of the ‘photo-op’ seen-around-the-world: the ‘dignitaries’ were not in fact “at” the Paris rallies but had the photo taken on an empty guarded side street.

 

We are living in a Potemkin world. Take nothing reported by the media at face value.

Maybe they’re just not very good

In which we are supposed to be very concerned that there are insufficient numbers of people of color nominated for awards given in Hollywood:

For only the second time in nearly two decades, the 20 Academy Awards acting nominations went to a group made up entirely of white actors and actresses. Among the notable snubs was David Oyelowo, who received praise for his turn as the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma.

In 2011, the 20 nominees also were entirely white. Before that, one has to go back to 1998 for an all-white acting group.

The all-white nominees list comes at a time when Hollywood is fielding criticism for not doing enough to promote diversity in filmmaking. And just last month, Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin were apologizing for leaked emails that appeared to be racially insensitive. Rudin was nominated this morning for producing best picture nominee The Grand Budapest Hotel.

What I find amusing about this is that while we’re informed that if right-wing writers aren’t nominated for awards, this is an indication of their lack of talent, but if Africans or women aren’t nominated for awards, this is an indication of racism and sexism.

Meanwhile, none of the science fiction SJWs celebrated the fact that a Hispanic man and a Indian were nominated for Hugo Awards last year. In fact, some of them are still openly decrying those nominations. The racists.

Another thing that is modestly amusing is the way in which the SJWs don’t understand the way in which a relative nonentity being given an affirmative action award when very young, then winning nothing afterwards, will be used as evidence against their accomplishments in the future. See the Sports Guy’s dissection of Wes Unsfeld’s MVP award in his rookie year, followed by a subsequent lack of honors, in The Book of Basketball for details.

NYT covering for Islam

The mainstream media in the USA and Europe are absolutely desperate to maintain the myth of the “Islamic radical” and hide the fact that it is the jihadists who are the Islamic reformers, not the so-called moderates:

Here’s the latest example of the New York Times censoring itself to avoid offending Muslims after an act of Islamic terror. This morning, BenK at Ace of Spades quoted an NYT story by Liz Alderman titled “Survivors Retrace a Scene of Horror at Charlie Hebdo.” Take note of these two paragraphs from that story:

    Sigolène Vinson, a freelancer who had decided to come in that morning to take part in the meeting, thought she would be killed when one of the men approached her.

    Instead, she told French news media, the man said, “I’m not going to kill you because you’re a woman, we don’t kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself,” she recalled.

I was intrigued by this quote, and it seemed worth exploring, so I went to the NYT story to quote it. But guess what?

Here’s what it says now:

    Sigolène Vinson, a freelance journalist who had come in that morning to take part in the meeting, said that when the shooting started, she thought she would be killed.

    Ms. Vinson said in an interview that she dropped to the floor and crawled down the hall to hide behind a partition, but one of the gunmen spotted her and grabbed her by the arm, pointing his gun at her head. Instead of pulling the trigger, though, he told her she would not be killed because she was a woman.

    “Don’t be afraid, calm down, I won’t kill you,” the gunman told her in a steady voice, with a calm look in his eyes, she recalled. “You are a woman. But think about what you’re doing. It’s not right.”

Nothing about telling her to convert to Islam. Nothing about telling her to read the Quran. Nothing about telling her to cover her face.

Nothing about the very reason these animals did this.

It sounds like the New York Times might have downright substituted their own words for those that Ms Vinson reported as well. Trust NOTHING that comes out of the mainstream press at face value. If they could get away with it, you know they’d blame the Charlie Hebdo attack on right-wing Christian militias.

Remember, as long ago as 2006, FORTY PERCENT of British Muslims were calling for the establishment of Sharia in the UK. There can be no compromise between Islam and the West, because one is either part of the Dar al-Islam or the Dar al-Harb.

Unfortunately, the idiots on the Left have learned nothing. On Slashdot, various leftists are pointing to the Crusades, to the 30 Years War, falsely claiming that the atheist Anders Breivik was a Christian, and in short, doing everything they can to keep their heads planted firmly in the Sand of Religious Equivalence.